Architectural Theory and History I：

Traditional Chinese Architecture

China and the/Other Bauhaus: 

Encounters and Reactions

Trained as a professional architect and granted a master’s degree in urban design, Chin-Wei Chang, in his previous research, has addressed the social production of spatial forms within non-architect contexts and everyday landscapes, and their conflicts with modernity in the contemporary built environment. Now a Ph.D. candidate in Architectural and Urban History & Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, he focuses on the architectural profession and academy, with special attention to the histories and dissemination of design education in China, Europe, and the United States. Chang is also a research associate at the Chinese Art Media Lab (CAMLab), Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University.

This talk examines China’s early modern architectural pedagogies before the 1952 restructuring of higher education. In this context, it reflects on two key figures—Liang Sicheng (1901–1972) and Huang Zuoshen (1915–1975)—in their respective departments of architectural engineering at Tsinghua University (Beijing) and St. John’s University (Shanghai). I explore three themes—architect-teacher, makeshift modernity, and contested discourse—which encapsulate Huang’s and Liang’s teaching methodology and reflect their foreign-study experiences beyond the Bauhaus. In so doing, the talk investigates Huang’s and Liang’s beliefs about the social position of the architect: It aligns Liang’s views on architecture’s relationship to society, engineering, and art with Huang’s commitment to architecture’s popular, scientific, and national aspects in post-1949 China. Taken together, this talk demonstrates that these two protagonists embody the pedagogic plurality that characterised the establishment of architectural education in the first half of twentieth-century China.

May 31, 2023 (Wednesday), 19:00–20:35 

Room B314

Tencent Meeting ID: 293-800-929

Password: 8591

[1] Chang, Chin-Wei. (2022) “China and the Bauhaus: Encounters and Reactions” in Harriet Harriss, Ashraf M. Salama, and Ane Gonzalez Lara (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Architectural Education in the Global South. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 133–144.

[2] Chang, Chin-Wei. (2017) “A Ground between Beaux-Arts, Modernism, and Chineseness: Tracing Modernities in China’s Architectural Education and Practice, 1919-1949”, Charrette (Journal of the Association of Architectural Educators [AAE]), Vol. 4, No. 2 (A special issue on Global Practices, Transnational Pedagogies), pp. 59–